


Legs

by spindleofwords



Series: It Takes Them Four Years and Maybe Nearly Dying [1]
Category: Static Shock
Genre: M/M, This is the beginning, hence the PG rating here guys, so they aren't actually together yet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-06
Updated: 2013-01-06
Packaged: 2017-11-23 22:07:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/627021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spindleofwords/pseuds/spindleofwords
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someone's starting to fill out a little, and someone else is starting to notice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Legs

SUMMER BEFORE FRESHMAN YEAR

Summer was hot.

Summer was always hot, but it was just---there were these days in the middle of summer, right before school started, these days that were so blistering it almost made you wish for school because at least that had decent air conditioning. 

Richie and Virgil haunted the Center during these days, mostly because of the pool stationed there, even though it didn’t open until ten thirty. On the best of days, the pool was crowded by lunchtime, but since Virgil’s dad worked at the Center, Virgil and Richie got to mess around in the pool from eight thirty to five, which was when Mr. Hawkin’s shift ended. 

If Richie really thought hard, he had always noticed Virgil, it just…never occurred to him that he liked the way Virgil looked more than he liked Frieda or Daisy. To be truthful, Richard Foley remembered certain flashes from his childhood with the other boy that made him blush because of the thoughts he had had but didn’t understand. 

Of course, by the last year of high school, they had gotten over the internalized homophobia they both had and were together, but it started way before that, before high school, back in eighth grade when Richie remembered noticing not only was Virgil different from him but also that he was extremely nice to look at.

Richie was thankful that back then, he hadn’t owned his own set of wheels to ride to the Center on. Watching Virgil come out of his garage door each day that summer in his swim shorts made the blonde’s head spin, pleasantly, but distractingly so. You could see the muscle tone just starting to build up in the boy’s calves, could see the hard line of the muscle just starting to form in his shins and sometimes his thighs when he sat down and his shorts rode up ever so slightly. It was enough to drive Richie crazy, but he managed to keep his composure and joke around like always with the other boy. It was worse, though, when Virgil stripped off his shirt and dove into the pool and resurfaced, water pulling long trails off the short locks and shining in the grooves and planes of Virg’s torso and chest, and if Richie waited for Virgil to go in and then come out of the pool to fetch him to “have a little fun for once in your life, Osgood, jeez,” it may or may not have been because of that.

Playing around in the pool was Richie’s favorite thing to do. He lost his glasses more times than he could count that year’s summer, feeling them slip off his face as Virgil grabbed him up in a headlock or yanked him down beneath the water. Virgil with his stupid smile that shone brighter than even the reflection of the sun against the water as he dove down and searched and searched and finally came back to Richie (always came back to Richie) bearing the glasses and a hint of sheepishness in his apology. And the blonde always took his glasses back and splashes Virgil with a tidal wave smack of his arm that left him punch-drunk and sputtering with his eyes squeezed shut and wouldn’t it be so easy for Richie to lean over and kiss Virgil when he was like that?

But oh, Richie knew that was wrong.

The first time he had the thought of it he swam out of the pool and remained huddled in his towel underneath the overhang, shivering and wet and dripping and miserable because what kind of a guy thought of kissing his best friend? His dad had always said fairies were worthless and trash and, well, while he’d said that about African-Americans too and it had turned out to be wrong, but it was also what he saw sometimes in the news, too, so that meant there had to be something wrong with him, right?

Virgil was such a good friend to him, made him lunches and shared Kool-Aid with him and invited him over to his house and let him sleepover when his dad had too much to drink. But here he was, Richard Osgood Foley, basically _using_ his friend. It didn’t take long for Virgil to start appearing in his dreams, and Richie woke himself up by force the first time, not wanting to use his friend that way but feeling half-hard in spite of his wishes.

So he stopped going by Virgil’s house for a while, tried to separate them a little, and it didn’t work because there was something **wrong** with him, there was something messed up in his head and all he could do on days without his friend was sit there and mope and want Virgil, want him all to himself and to lock themselves in V’s room to play video games all day. He was weak; usually, after two days of not seeing Virgil he ended up sleeping over at his house because he couldn’t take it anymore.

 

The night it happened was after four days without Virgil. Richie had lasted longer that week and he was perversely proud in the misery he’d caused himself, because he deserved all the bad feelings, all of them.

Even Sharon noticed when he finally did come around, commenting loudly when he walked by her that “thank god your little friend is here, Virgil, you’ve been so pissy for the last couple of days,” and maybe it was true because all Virgil did was shoot a hand out to grip Richie’s wrist tight and drag him up the stairs without snarking back at his sister. They did play video games all day, stopping once for lunch and another time for dinner, and Richie sat next to Virgil and kicked him under the table with his bare feet when Virgil made stupid jokes, feeling the warm skin of his legs underneath of his toes and smiling happily as they ate.

Rich called the bathroom first and darted in to brush his teeth and wash his face, but Virgil was dead to the world when he came back into the other’s room. The blonde stopped dead in the doorway; he never needed an extra place to sleep, usually; one of them would fall asleep and the other would take the unoccupied part of the bed. But here was his stupid best friend tangled up in the covers, laying on his stomach, legs splayed wide and open as the moon shone in and highlighted the dark curve of his thigh and the slope of his calf down to the arch of his feet, locks in a halo around Virg’s head on the pillow, and Richie fell against the doorjamb without meaning to, sucking in a breath and feeling all the weaker for it.

That night, Richie slept on the floor and tried desperately not to think of the same dark legs pinning his hips down, or around his waist, or nudging his own pale, thin legs open.

He didn’t get any sleep that summer, it seemed.


End file.
